Imagine your college's spec/prosbie/prospective student weekend but with private jets and Tigerettes (I'm a poet and I don't even know it). These three stories about Willie Williams' trip to fsuauburn , and miami make fascinating reads. Willie, for those who don't read the Parade HS football all-american special (do they still do that?) or watched FSU vs. Miami in the diamond nuts bowl, is one of the top HS prospects in the land. Williams basically narrates these 'articles', and we get a good sense of his voice, an interesting mix of naiveté and worldliness that permeates big-time college athletics. We also learn that he hates spinach dip because `I ain't no animal, and I ain't going to eat no plant.' If at any point he has sex with twins, a la Ray Allen as a young college recruit, he politely keeps it to himself.
The seemingly arbitrary criteria he bases his judgement on (is the broken shower in the auburn hotel any indication of what four years of college will be like?) feel like petty justifications to cover his prejudgements. Or maybe I'm reading it too closely. Overall, we find that it takes a lot of lobster tails to convince someone to make you millions of dollars and not get paid for it. A system is perfectly designed to produce the results that it produces, and if these stories represent the results of big-money college athletics, something in the system needs to be changed.Ian

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Usually this annual article comes out after the Super Bowl in the dreaded space between the big game and March Madness, but I guess with a clunker like Pats/Panthers, the New York Times' sportswriters were already sitting around pondering what kinds of feel-good stories about sports they could come up with during the worst month in sports. Here's the first in what I'm sure will be a month-long series, Grinnell's Unusual Style Leads Nation in Scoring. I'm pretty sure they wrote the same story last year. The only thing they didn't mention was the average SAT score at Grinnell. ben

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Read these regularly and you'll have your finger on the pulse of what educated America is concerned with, or making fun of, or reading, or listening to, or thumbing their noses at. Each has added more material to their web sites in recent years, making it even easier to get access to some of the best journalistic work around. Harper's for some reason was the least web-friendly, despite being the cheapest for a year's subscription. The NYT Magazine wins the most web-friendly award, as far as I can tell everything's online except for the ads. Right now I subscribe to the Atlantic (X-mas present from Meghan...thanks!) and the New Yorker ($25 a year student deal...can't beat that) and read the NYT Mag online weekly. They sure makes for good study-break reading, and they feed the effete east-coast liberal snob side of me.

By the way, according to Ian, anyone can call up and ask for the New Yorker student discount, no proof of being a "student" required. But, uh, you didn't hear that from me. ben

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What's the big deal? So what if a minor league baseball player does a little gay porn to earn a little scratch in college? I mean, now they're going to have to make a big deal about the civil union between Tom Brady and Jake Delhomme. Oops, did I let that slip? Sorry guys. William

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Ben, wow. Um, yeah, "CBS Sunday Morning" is one of my all-time faves, and I try to watch every week. It's so antithetical to our generation's News! Now! philosophy--well-thought and pleasantly paced features that go beyond the 7-second soundbite and 2-minute story. I liken it to NPR for television. (In fact the CBS crew calls it a Sunday paper on television.) In any event, it's wonderful. And if you like it, you'll also love PRI's "This American Life" on the radio. Have fun going through the archives. Ira Glass has become a kind of uber-radio-geek and has faced a bit of a backlash in certain sectors of "cool," but it's still a wonderful program, perhaps the best radio show out there.

Which brings me to a pet peeve. Some very quality things get dissed just because they become popular. It's the age-old question of the sell-out. Can things still be good once they are big? I'm currently reading "Live From New York" about SNL's history, and this debate was going on back then, too, and it's probably gone on as long as anything has been "cool" or "hip" or whatever. I reason that even if something gains popularity with the masses, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's lost its edge completely. SNL certainly has gotten less edgy as the years have gone on, but it's still remarkable that it's around and has the occasional ability to hit it out of the park.

Perhaps because "CBS Sunday Morning" is aimed at an older audience, it hasn't really been on the "hip" rollercoaster, but "This American Life" has to some degree, even when quality has remained the same. Sometimes the fickle winds of popularity need to get over themselves. William

Personally, I think Bill Geist is funny. But maybe that's just me. Will, are you in shock that that's the only regularly scheduled t.v.-time in my busy life? Also, I'm thrilled to see Ian making some contributions to SnapCulture. I'd love to see a new Ian post every day. But again, maybe that's just me. ben

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Ah, don't know how I missed this before, but Gawker now has a kid sister in DC, Wonkette. Wonkette is a good source for politics and DC-related gossip, but like most things in DC, it's relatively tame compared to its NYC brother. Nevertheless, I'm adding a perma-link to the side of the page. William

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As we march into the new year we must not forget our brothers of the establishment. We rarely hear their self-assured voices--except in protest--when it comes to art/music/creative enterprise. That’s why my favorite ‘Best of the Year’ list every year is the National Review Online’s Music Top Ten. It’s the only review that (negatively) evaluates music based on its tendency to “actively corrode bourgeois values…”

After thinking about why I like this review so much, I realized that it’s hard to be a conservative music critic. It requires two separate balancing acts:

A) As an admirer of ‘tradition’ it is sometimes difficult to pick the best of the new. Notice the tone of disappointment in this article. Another year of pop failure. Kids these days. Nothing is quite like it was when it was better (David Bowie makes the top ten). While the kids at Pitchfork Media rush head long into new musical expression that will ‘change the world’—implicitly a good thing because the world currently needs changing—the NRO can’t be so enthusiastic.

B) Free marketeers versus social conservatives. It’s the same internal debate you’ll find everywhere on the NRO. The market has chosen it’s winners and since the market is the most efficient expression of popular taste, the best selling albums of 2003 are the best. But the social conservatives know this isn’t true, and Karnick has to acknowledge this. See his championing of the tiny 'Be' by Salem Hill with the fervor of an indie rocker.

So where do these influences lead Karnick? He picks Prog-rock, with a Barenaked Ladies, Blink 182, Fountains of Wayne twist. Old, melodic, popular, inoffensive. A perfect fit.

The details of the review are also enjoyable, watch for this quote about hiphop: “Rap, once all but ubiquitous, seems to be waning, slowly but surely; the broader category if hip-hop, though, with its rather more positive social aura, is still going strong.” Hmm, I thought from my sources on the street that rap was an activity, hiphop was the culture; it still seems like the act of 'rapping' is pretty popular (check the grammy nominations). And is he thinking of ‘positive social aura’ of Eminem, 50 cent, or Ludacris? Maybe he just heard the Blackeyed Peas one too many times this year (like us all).

Addendum: Being conservative is cool, which is something the guys at the The Baffler have been saying since the mid-nineties, although they are more dumbfounded, asking how did supporting big business become anti-establishment? Ian

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What accounts for the rise of the word “awesome?” There are many theories. Here are five:

1. “Awesome” is usually an absurd overstatement of one’s approval, which calls
the approval itself into question, which absolves one from the consequences of
actually approving.
2. The rapidly improving quality of consumer goods and popular entertainments has given rise to a higher instance of genuine awe. That is to say, the world is already a pretty awesome place, and it is getting even more awesome every day.
3. A chasm has suddenly yawned open between the present and the past. The aging
youth flings a rope-bridge into the air, attempting to span the gap. “Awesome” is the
sound the rope-bridge makes as it clatters down the side of the canyon’s wall.
4. The absence of actual awe has left behind lingering trace hopes that merely calling
something awesome will make it so.
5. “Awesome” is a very easy and pleasurable word to say. Ian

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Rappers are apparently trading in their guns and jewelry for Charities and puppies and everything nice. Gimme a break. These guys are all about making more money, and if saying "I don't wear big expensive jewelry anymore" is going to appeal to more people, they'll do it. I have no faith in the "hip-hop" industry that has been exclusively trying to appeal to mainstream (read: white) audiences for the past 20 years trying to pretend that it's "keeping it real".

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Slate's 34 best movies of the year. For my picks, I'd say I liked Lost in Translation, The Station Agent, A Mighty Wind, Lord of the Rings and Something's Gotta Give. Sadly, those are pretty much all of the movies I've seen this year. I have to see The Cooler, and rent Spellbound, School of Rock, American Splendor, and Kill Bill.

For a discussion of the year's best movies, Slate's roundtable is the place to go.ben